Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
Extension to a Victorian semi-detached villa that creates a ‘Janus’ house with a fox-shaped rear façade
and a new floor plan designed to give a generous space for the family.
The client’s brief was to reorganize and extend the back of their Victorian house to make a generous
family space for cooking, eating and relaxing that addressed the garden and encouraged outdoor play.
Being in Islington’s Mercers Road Conservation Area, there were constraints on development and the
client’s previous planning application had been rejected. The design approach was to have a strong
concept for the remodelling that directly addressed the Conservation Area guidance.
The design proposed creates what architect Peter Smithson described as a ‘Janus building’: a structure
that has two faces like the Roman God of beginnings and ends. The extension would therefore be made
of the same red facing bricks as the front façade and in order to heighten their decorative effect they
change orientation and bond depending on which element in the elevation they belong to. This also
broke the extension façade into elements that matched the scale and informality of the dormers and
extensions of the houses’ garden façades.
As the garden faces north, efforts were made to improve daylight to the rear of the building and
provide optimal opportunities for outdoor living. A paved terrace was laid that swells into the garden at
exactly the spot where the sun lingers longest in the summer months. A kink in the garden, where an
unattractive garage had been erected in the 1980’s, became a small winter garden looking back at the
house. A rich interior material and colour palette gives the otherwise open plan a comfortable, domestic
quality.